I'm a professor of International Business and Management at the George Washington University School of Business. Prior to joining GW, I served as Professor of Management at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. I also held a joint appointment as Professor of Sociology on NYU’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and was Director of Executive Education at NYU-Stern from 2007-09. I've also written and edited numerous books, articles, and reports on Chinese economic reform, leadership, and corporate social responsibility, including "Dragon in a Three-Piece Suit: The Emergence of Capitalism in China" and "China and Globalization: The Economic, Political, and Social Transformation of China." I've also been the recipient of teaching awards, best paper awards, and grants from the Ford and Sloan Foundations.

Corporate America and Its Leaders: They Had Help

In a speech last week to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out that successful individuals or corporations in the United States did not achieve their success alone. They had help.

Yet the debt he was recounting wasn’t owed to parents, spouses or mentors but rather to the U.S. government, which has been the business community’s helpmate over the last century in growing the U.S. economy, corporate profits and individual incomes.

Entire industries can trace their creation and evolution to the government’s thought leadership and largesse. The automobile industry couldn’t have thrived without the taxpayer-funded National Highway System; the real estate market needed the federal mortgage tax break to flourish; and the nation’s intellectual engines would have stalled out without the legal protections woven into our federal laws.

It is fashionable to disdain government today, dismissing it as a maze of misanthropic bureaucracy responsible for undermining the marketplace and stripping much-needed dollars from individual citizens and the economy.

Many U.S. business schools have enshrined this dogma as much as government’s foes in the political realm, embracing neoclassical economics and the cult of the shareholder rather than promoting a more ecumenical approach to capitalism.

Keynesian economics, which preceded neoclassical economics as a guiding principle in the United States for nearly 40 years, championed a vision where the public and private sectors played complementary roles in building value in the economy. It was a pragmatic and successful approach to setting and expanding fiscal policy.

What was lost in the transition between these two economic worldviews in the last 30 years was a recognition that business is embedded in society, a society ruled by laws that govern behavior and set long-term economic priorities and goals, often to the benefit of corporate America. Divorcing government and its regulatory authority from the U.S. marketplace may make a compelling political argument for some, but it is flawed thinking when considering how best to manage the economy for the long term. And it robs the economy of government’s most crucial roles—investor and innovator.

I was reminded of Friedman’s exhortation when I spoke last week with two George Washington School of Business (GWSB) graduates who are working as fellows in the Office of the Mayor of the District of Columbia. These two fellows—Karima Woods and Will Creighton—are putting their MBAs to good use by helping guide city initiatives on small business and real estate development.

“The value of having the federal government involved here is immense. It can really help take a small company and turn it into a very robust company,” said Ms. Woods, who is working to connect D.C.-based small business owners to federal-contracting and international-export opportunities.

At work in Mayor Vincent Gray’s office, our fellows are finding that government plays a vital role in sowing the seeds for economic development—tax incentives, proactive policies and regulatory initiatives—transforming neighborhoods and allowing businesses to prosper.

This is a lesson that our trade partners, especially China and Singapore, have long understood and leveraged to their best advantage. Despite the cries of foul from the United States and other nations, China and Singapore have excelled at finding opportunities for government-industry tag teams to encourage investment and growth, with the result being an era of economic vitality in both countries.

A unique example of these government-industry partnerships can be found in Suzhou, China. Located outside of Shanghai, Suzhou was looking to distinguish itself from its larger-than-life neighboring city. Suzhou city officials saw the value in developing the fertile ground needed to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), but they could not do it alone. They reached out to the Singaporean government to fund an industrial park, one that would bring billions in FDI to the city. The $9 billion Singaporean investment resulted in a booming FDI business in Suzhou that today rivals any in China.

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